The Sopranos and Philosophy by Greene Richard Pastore Vincent Vernezze Peter

Author:Greene, Richard, Pastore, Vincent, Vernezze, Peter
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780812698084
Publisher: Open Court

10

Dying in Our Own Arms:

Liberalism, Communitarianism,

and the Construction of Identity

on The Sopranos

H. PETER STEEVES

Envelopes of Cash

I’m not sure how many connected men I’ve met in my life. At least three. Likely more. The number seems high to me as I’ve lived most of my life in the quiet American Midwest—not a hot-bed of Cosa Nostra activity by most regards. And yet, I have stories.

When I was just out of my first year of college I was in search of a summer job and thus came to tutor the only son of a rich Italian businessman in a town in Illinois. The boy was attending summer high school and it was my job to see he passed every class, especially the math and science courses, his greatest challenges. We worked for hours each day (it was a struggle; he bore more than a passing resemblance to A.J. Soprano in body as well as mind); and I would reward myself most nights by accepting the hospitality of the family, especially happy to take home a Tupperware container of the mother’s manicotti or the grandmother’s fresh cassatta siciliana—exotic foods to my Ohio-born, Hamburger Helper-acquainted, Velveeta-accustomed palate.

In my memories, twisted and interpreted as memories necessarily are, the grandmother was a lovely stereotype. Not a scheming Livia Soprano, but a Hollywood creation nonetheless: the happy Italian nonna committed to her family, talking about “the Old Country” with a tear in her eye, offering food as the solution to all of life’s problems. She had been born in Italy and moved to the U.S. as a young girl; and after more than seventy years in this county she still seemed “Italian” to me in a way that was somehow deeper than her son’s.

The father’s business had something to do with construction, though it was impossible for me to imagine him ever having a speck of dirt on his clothes. The materials from which his suits were made seemed flowing and smooth, like running wine. No jogging suits and see-through socks in his closets. He seemed such a good and kind man as well. He clearly loved his family. He slapped me on the back each day with a smile, thanked me for doing a commendable job with his son, treated me with respect and good humor, and paid me every Friday. In the middle of trying to get out of a geometry lesson one particularly sunny morning, his son once spoke of the family’s boat out on the lake, eventually making a passing reference to his father’s work and letting the word “construction” hang in the air with an ironic tone. But it’s not as if I accidentally came across $50,000 in Krugerrands and a .45 automatic while hunting for a pencil sharpener in the house. And yet. . . .

At the end of the summer, “A.J.” passed all of his classes to the delight and surprise of his parents (and his tutor), and everyone insisted that I come to the house one last time that final Labor Day weekend as part of the family.

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